Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have really enjoyed this meeting. It has been very informative. It was mentioned that a report would come out from this. This place just publishes reports and nothing happens to them. It is incumbent on the witnesses and us to make sure that there is action on that report and that we follow up. If the committee runs into barriers in getting actions on the recommendations of that report, it is up to us as legislators and public representatives to ensure we get over these barriers and be that voice because otherwise it will just be left on the shelf. We see reports all the time and they are just left there. We might follow up a year later to find out where that report is and nobody knows where it is. It is a regular thing.

Ms Kearney and other people mentioned early intervention for mental health. I am my party's spokesperson on mental health and I know that early intervention piece is just not there. Primary care psychology was mentioned with 11,000 children on a waiting list, with 4,000 children waiting for more than a year. Somebody mentioned there is a three-and-a-half year waiting list in Ballyfermot alone That is the primary care. If a young person or a child does not get primary care at that stage, they are likely to need more acute care which CAMHS is meant to give. The multidisciplinary approach by CAMHS is not there at the moment. We have seen two recent reports, the Maskey report and the Mental Health Commission report, which stand as a damning indictment on how CAMHS is not working, not how it is working. People cannot access the care they need when they need it and where they need it.

Young people's and children's access to community disability networks teams has not been mentioned today. As Ms Harris will know, that has a big impact on my community. When young people are not getting that therapeutic intervention at an early stage, they are more likely to need more mental health support and the supports provided by the organisations represented here today. They have to do that because nobody else is doing so.

That piece - the interaction between child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, primary care and the community disability network teams - has to be there, and the youth services. There was mention of 2025. I will put my hands up to something that I have omitted to do. I refer to this conversation around extending services out to 2025. If you look at Sharing the Vision, it states the timeline for CAMHS should be extended to 2025 as well. Instead of a CAMHS model, it is a school inclusion model, SIM. My party has been working on our own policy document on that. I have reached out to all sectors and I have not reached out to the youth. That is an omission on my part. When I am reaching out, I am thinking of the statutory mental health services that are out there already providing the services instead of the groups that are holding our young people in that space. That is an omission of mine. That is something that we need to learn as legislators, not only to think outside the box but also to go to the people who are delivering it on the ground.

I will ask my two questions because I do not want to use too much of my time. The first is around that community mental health model that Ms Kearney was talking about. Where is that and what conversations has she had on that?

My second question is about that street work. It is vitally important, as Mr. Perth said, to meet young people where they are at. It is not where you think they should be; it is where they are at. As Mr. Perth will be aware, I worked as an outreach worker. I worked with young people under the age of 18 who were using substances as a coping mechanism or a way of dealing with internal trauma. The work was funded, it was doing well, and then we had a new manager come into the service that I was working in who decided that we were not funded for that. After him having the conversation with the young people, they said that I never talked about drugs. When he came back to me and said that I was not even talking about their drug use, I said that the drug use was only a symptom. That was not the problem. It is a symptom of whatever else is going on with these young people. I believe in street work. It has a vital place in youth work and in substance use, etc. On the pilot project, I was wondering where it is at present. Will it be rolled out further? Are there any plans to expand that into other parts of Tallaght or other areas as well?